During motor vehicle body shell manufacture and assembly the typical bill of process requires the side doors to be installed on the vehicle body shell and set for alignment to provide appropriate margin and flushness to adjacent body panels. This is achieved by first mounting hinges to the doors, manually or robotically aligning the hinged door assembly to the body shell, and securing the hinges in place. The completed body shell with aligned doors is then cycled through various additional processes, such as corrosion protection, a paint process, and others. After painting, the doors must be removed. This is because during final vehicle assembly access through the door openings is required to install other vehicle components such as the instrument panel, seats and other interior trim. To accomplish this, the doors are removed by removing only the center hinge pin, thus maintaining the alignment for final assembly by way of the respective body and door brackets.
In conventional manufacturing processes, the above-summarized bill of process must be modified for vehicles including side doors incorporating “smart” technology, i.e. motor-driven or assisted opening/closing, door edge protect, power cinch, door open assist, door soft close, and other functions. This is because in a door wherein a motor is mounted to the hinge, the motor assembly must be directly aligned to the hinge axis to provide smooth open/close operation and to reduce or eliminate functional failures. However, the motor mechanism cannot be exposed to certain of the above processes such as corrosion protection, painting, etc., and so cannot be installed until after those processes are completed. Moreover, due to inter-vehicle dimensional variations in door structure, body structure, and hinge assemblies, the hinge axis varies from one vehicle design to another. Thus, the automated process of installing/removing door structures during manufacture/assembly becomes more complicated in vehicles incorporating motor-driven doors, with attendant increases in manufacturing/assembly labor and cost.
To solve these and other problems, the present disclosure describes a side door motor mounting assembly which enables the mounting and proper alignment of a door motor with a door hinge assembly axis. Advantageously, the described mounting assembly includes a radial adjustment feature allowing making adjustments to the motor positioning to ensure direct alignment to the door hinge axis, thus ensuring smooth and proper functioning of the motor-driven door.